Civilisation : its cause and cure and other essays / by Edward Carpenter.

Edward Carpenter

Date:: 1921

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Licence: In copyright

Credit: Civilisation : its cause and cure and other essays / by Edward Carpenter. Source: Wellcome Collection.

303/312 page 299

life founded as it now is on deceit and the plunder and pillage of the agricultural nations.” From O’Brien’s IVhite Shadows in the South Seas. (New York, 1919.) “ A hundred years ago there were 160,000 Marquesans in these [South Sea] Islands. To-day their total number does not reach 2,100.” O’Brien describes the bad effects of Christianity on these “savages.” For he says the so- called superstitions of these races had a great vitalising influence. Their dancing, their tattooing, their religious rites, their chanting and their warfare gave them a zest in life. But “to-day all Polynesians from Hawaii to Tahiti are dying because of the suppression of the play-instinct that had its expression in most of their customs and occupations.” And they are now “ nothing but joyless machines ” and “ tired of life.” Failure of Our Civilisation For a searching comparison between our social conditions and those of the many savage communities visited by him —and much to the general advantage of the latter—see A. R. Wallace’s Malay Archipelago (1st ed. 1869), pp. 456, 7 (ed. 1894). And he ends the book by saying : “ Until there is a more general recognition of this failure of our civilisation—resulting mainly from our neglect to train and develop more thoroughly the sympathetic feelings and moral faculties of our nature, and to allow them a larger share of influence in our legislation, our commerce, and our whole social organisation—we shall never, as regards the whole community, attain to any real or import¬ ant superiority over the better class of savages. This is the lesson I have been taught by my observations of un¬ civilised man. “ I now bid my readers—Farewell ! ” 299 Wellrome Library

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